Archive for 2004/08

I left my old work without the intention of returning, though at the time, I thought I was going to stick with school and go straight through for the PhD.

Ha ha!

I should have known better; by the time I actually left work, I was already starting to feel the massive burnout, and the fall semester of 03, where I stupidly took 5 classes when I didn’t really need to, turned it into an especially acute case. In the spring, I signed up for 3 classes and ended up dropping one. One of the two classes I kept was a course in which the requirement was ‘show up’. Homework was optional.

The other was my last requirement for graduation: the project. That got finished, at the last possible minute, thanks in part to J and Bob.

And so school was then done. I couldn’t face going back again for more, and had no real clue what I would have done for a thesis anyway. Thus began a somewhat unenthusiastic search for work. The burnout left me lethargic and apathetic, much as it had after my first brush with graduate school in the summer of 99.

But things were different now; Bob was not at a good job, and has, in fact, spent most of the summer driving himself insane by working 70 hour weeks at two jobs that are, bluntly, not good enough for him. I told myself that I had until mid-August to come up with something, and after that, I would have to get some kind of position so that he could drop one of his.

My old boss emailed me several weeks ago, and I put off replying to her. I knew from other people that they had never hired anyone to replace me, and something about her email made me think that if I asked, I could probably go back. But… I wasn’t sure I really wanted to go back. The pay is not great and the job is a dead end.

But in the end, it’s better paying and better than retail. So I finally emailed her back, and will be starting there next Tuesday for an amount of time that at present is indeterminate.